Multimatic Motorsports Team Panoz is off to a roaring start. Team Panoz dominated the opening round of 2006 American Le Mans Series as the No. 50 Panoz Esperante GTLM of David Brabham, Scott Maxwell and Sebastien Bourdais captured top honors in GT2 class at last weekend's the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Multimatic Motorsports Team Panoz is off to a roaring start. Team Panoz dominated the opening round of 2006 American Le Mans Series as the No. 50 Panoz Esperante GTLM of David Brabham, Scott Maxwell and Sebastien Bourdais captured top honors in GT2 class at last weekend's the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Despite tough challenges from the Ferrari, Porsche and BMW opposition, the No. 50 Panoz Esperante led 178 of the 320 laps completed – spending seven hours and 22 minutes in the race lead.



Two-time Champ Car World Series champion Sebastien Bourdais battled a late-race gearbox issue as he completed the final stint, finishing 5.365 seconds ahead of the Porsche of Mark Lieb, Jon Fogarty and Johannes van Overbeek.

The Ferrari 430 GT Berllinetta of Anthony Lazarro, Ralf Kelleners and Jamie Melo finished third.

Brabham led the race for the opening 69 minutes before the first round of pit stops. The new Ferrari loomed as the toughest opposition for the Panoz squad as the lead changed repeatedly during the pit stop cycle for the opening seven and half hours of the race.

The Panoz began to assert its authority a little past midway through the race when Bourdais passed the Ferrari after seven hours and 36 minutes. From that point on, the Toronto-based Multimatic Panoz squad dominated the event – spending stints of 52, 56, 57 and 52 minutes in the lead – only losing top spot during each round of pit stops.

Panoz veteran David Brabham spent a total of 78 laps in the race lead, followed by Bourdais with 55 and Maxwell with 45. The victory was Brabham's 11th class victory in the history of the American Le Mans Series, the second for Maxwell and Bourdais's first. Brabham's GT2 victory was his third Sebring Twelve Hour success – backing up his GT1 win with Aston Martin from last year and the 1998 Panoz GT prototype victory.

"This is an outstanding start for this program, I am just so proud of everybody involved," Multimatic Vice President and Motorsports Technical Director, Larry Holt said. "Don and Danny Panoz have entrusted us with this program and to start the season with a victory – especially at such a tough race like Sebring is outstanding. I was confident we had the speed, but the reliability the car showed is a real credit to our guys on the crew. David, Scott and Sebastien did a brilliant job, and it feels great to be leading the championship after the opening round.

"It would have been nice to had two cars running strong at the finish, but Sebring can be a real car breaker. Gunnar and Tom showed they have the pace to challenge strongly this year and it's a real pity for Bruno he didn't get more laps in his first sports car race. We had a great battle against Porsche, Ferrari and BMW but the Panoz Esperante again showed it is an outstanding car both on the road and on the track."

While the No. 50 Panoz trio got to spray champagne on the podium, the Sebring event was a bittersweet day for teammates Gunnar Jeannette, Tom Milner and Bruno Junqueira. After showing impressive pace early in the race, the car lost rear drive after two hours, 36 minutes – leaving Junqueira stranded on course and putting the car out of the event

The No. 50 Panoz Esperante finished 9th overall in the 54th running of the annual Sebring event, which was won by the new diesel-powered Audi R10 of Tom Kristensen, Dindo Capello and Alan McNish.

The next race on the schedule for the new championship-leading Multimatic Motorsports Team Panoz squad will be the Lone Star Grand Prix in Houston from May 11-13.